St. Sebastian

Slender arrows,
pierce me through.

I wanted to forgive, 

but too quickly 

they flew.

My mind fades.

I rise to You. 

**

(12/30/2011)

Image: St. Sebastian, Andrea Mantegna 1456-59, Kunsthistorisches Museum 

(viewed at the De Young Museum, San Francisco)

Afternoon Moon

On this concrete pad,

worn thin by time and rain,
our two iron chairs
stand empty and lifeless

when two blackbirds descend
waiting in uneasy repose,
glancing sharply,

their beaks parted, tasting
the constant wind,
and rise when they decide
the time is perfect,

perfect like this brilliant
California day and
this endless
California sky

all morning-clouds blown
east to Nevada, and all
morning-fog pushed back
to the crawling Pacific,

with nothing between us and
the absolute universe
but the truant moon,
nearly transparent,

faded blue
like my jeans,
and washed out
to perfection.

(17 July 2012)

Moon-struck

“We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. “ - Thomas Merton, from No Man is an Island

high above my sight

she’s shining with borrowed light

unaware of me,

oblivious of

the moon-struck sea, she sings her

song: simple, pure, free.

(26 October 2012)

Love in the Afternoon

“Love affects more than our thinking and our behavior toward those we love. It transforms our entire life.” Thomas Merton.


I wish
we could live
forever,

our bodies throbbing
with endless desire,
rising higher
with inexorable fire!

Then would I love you
unceasingly, like the  sun
embracing with eternal light
the constant moon,
beloved wife.

(31 October 2013)

Sendai

The earth is still today.

Trees rise to the grey sky
high branches,
thin stems, etched
to stasis of
a photograph.

Be glad,
for motion can kill
when deep plates grind
shocking
ocean, city, coastal plain
‘til tsunami clears away
cars and trucks, homes cascading
like driftwood in swollen springs
rushing from the heaving sea
to a more fundamental deep,

where at last silence
arrests crushed chests,
and pain ceases
beneath the liquid earth.

For no cry can pierce
the stillness
of a ruptured world.

(13 March 2011)